This is Disruption
This is Disruption podcast explores the pursuit of creativity and shares the stories of the fearless creators in street art, graffiti, music, photography and beyond, who boldly challenge the status quo, break barriers for others and share their work unapologetically. Each episode is a deep dive interview exploring the lives of artistic risk takers, exploring their motivations, their inspirations, and their take on the power of art, in whatever form they make it in.
The podcast is hosted by Irish street artist and DJ, Did by Rua, based in London.
This is Disruption
Rx Skulls: Crafting a Vibrant Artistic Legacy
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Halloween Special! Prolific street artist RX Skulls kindly joined me for a chat where we discuss his world of vibrant skull imagery and unique street art installations. We discuss how a childhood passion for cartoons and comics led him down the path from digital graphic design and photography, how he came to create the iconic skull we know him for now, and how it all came together resulting in a fascinating combination of morbid imagery and beautiful vivid colours.
In this episode we discuss how and where it all begin, and gain a deeper understanding of Rx's artistic evolution and how his love for handmade crafts was rekindled through the tactile nature of street art and screen printing.
We learn about the beginnings that shaped Rx's career, from site-specific college art projects to an eye-opening European adventure that solidified his commitment to street art, and discuss how a supportive global art community, fostered through platforms like Flickr, helped him navigate the challenges, refine his craft and find his people. The Portland street art scene emerges as place where collaboration and shared techniques developed his growth and creativity. RX's stories of camaraderie and connection illustrate the non-gatekeeping spirit that defines the world of street art.
His advice on maintaining authenticity and passion over profit offers a refreshing perspective for aspiring artists. With a strong social media presence and a playful approach to his craft (dad joke faces allowed and encouraged) RX is creating a lasting legacy in the street art community, as he creatively intertwines humor, personal history, and a touch of the macabre into his work.
Links for all things RX Skulls:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rxskulls/
You can find RX's online shop at: arrex.bigcartel.com
His clothing launch will be via www.modifiedprintingshop.com
And anyone and everyone is welcome to commission digital or screen printed sticker jobs via rxskullsemail@gmail.com
(website will be live for ordering in a couple months, which I'll be update here when it is ready!)
Thanks for checking the podcast out! If you'd like to come and say hi on socials, you'll find more content and trailers for upcoming episodes below:|
Instagram (https://instagram.com/thisisdisruptionpod/)
TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@thisisdisruptionpod)
Hello there. You are very welcome to. This is Disruption podcast, with me, your host Rua. This podcast brings you in-depth interviews with the fearless creatives in street art, graffiti, music, photography and beyond, who boldly challenge the status quo, break barriers for others and share their work unapologetically. Each episode is a deep dive into the lives of artistic risk takers, exploring their motivations, their inspirations and their reasons for their willingness to disrupt societal norms. Some of these stories involve revolutionizing their industries, while others are pushing the boundaries of legality with their art. Coming up on today's episode.
Speaker 2:You know the Skull. It literally took 10 years to get to where it is now. I mean, I think I only stopped evolving it a few years ago. The fact that my work has been prolific is, I think, comes from that that knowing that you know stuff's going to disappear. That's just part of the game, and so the more I put up, the more it's going to survive. It's so satisfying to know that you've made something by hand and then it's here, right here, you know, in your hand you can hold it.
Speaker 1:I am thrilled to share this conversation with one of the most recognizable and prolific street artists active right now Rx Skulls. Rx is a Portland-based artist and in this chat, you'll hear his stories about his journey and evolution in the scene. Rx is a Portland-based artist and in this chat, you'll hear his stories about his journey and evolution in the scene. Rx is a legend and I've been so excited to share this with you. As always, I believe podcasts are best enjoyed if you create something as you listen. This is Disruption. I am super excited today to be joined by a street art legend. I am talking to Oryx Gulls, who is a prolific, dynamic artist who has a background in graphic design and is now known for his distinctive style and skulls. He creates vibrant art, really bold imagery, and it can be seen on streets all around the world. Oryx, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Thank you for that beautiful introduction.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to talk to you because when I started this podcast, I did a call out on Instagram for who would people like to hear from, and your name was the highest that came up. You were the most voted for.
Speaker 2:Oh wow. Oh, that is very humbling to hear. That's super cool.
Speaker 1:Like I said in the introduction, you are so recognizable and you are prolific. You are absolutely everywhere. So many people know your work, which is amazing, and a lot of people clearly have questions. So thank you for joining me to answer some of those.
Speaker 2:My pleasure.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to the beginning. Let's go back to the very start. We'll talk all about your process and what you do now, but the question I usually like to open with is what is the first piece of art that you ever remember making or liking?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. And are you speaking with regard to my street art project, or do you just mean in life?
Speaker 1:I mean in life. So when you're a little kid, is there an image or a piece of art that you either remember making or seeing, that resonated with you for some reason?
Speaker 2:You know, I think the thing that pops into my head. I wasn't sure if there was going to be something and then this thing just popped in my head I would copy cartoons. So I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was really little and so I do recall copying and doing my own renditions of 90s cartoons. I'm a 90s kid so you know it was like I recall Rugrats and Cow and Chicken and gosh. What are some other ones? Rocco's Modern Life and drawing a blank.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I would copy those and draw my own little comic strips, and I think it was like cartoons and comics that got me into both drawing and reading. I had no interest really in reading until I found comic books and then my parents kind of jumped on that and were like, oh, this is our in, you know, and so they would buy me lots of comic books. As long as I would read them, they would buy them. And then, with regard to drawing, yeah, it was inspiration from pop culture, tv shows.
Speaker 1:There's a reason I ask this, and what I find is everybody that I've asked has some element of the art that they loved when they were young and what they do now. So for you, for example, really cartoonized, but like very vibrant, colorful skulls or skeletons. I see that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a good point. I never thought about that. I don't think I've thought that that far back. And I do think that there's a graphic quality to my work that I really like, because, you know, even though I start everything by, I don't want to get too ahead of myself, but by carving everything by hand, I still always come back to cleaning everything up nice and crisp digitally, and so I think that's an interesting kind of connection there. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I always loved skulls too. I mean, like most little kids grow out of that and I guess I just never did. But there was, I mean, I remember collecting pogs when I was, you know, a little kid and you know pogs had their small period in pop culture and I had all I just collected all the skull pogs, you know it was like. So there's definitely been a long time connection to kind of morbid style imagery as well. That has never gone away that's a really interesting one.
Speaker 1:So I love Halloween. Did you know Halloween is Irish?
Speaker 2:I did not know that.
Speaker 1:Halloween is Irish, so it comes from a pagan festival called Samhain and it started in Ireland and it's a long-standing holiday in Ireland. We actually have a bank holiday back there for Halloween. It is just such a huge thing. Then, when the Irish immigrated to America, they took the traditions with them. We traditionally carve turnips, but when they went to the US, turnips were hard to find, so pumpkins it became. Kids love this and I have a little cousin who's three years old back in Ireland and she loves skulls and skeletons, everything like a little bit related to that, which is really interesting. You talk about growing out of it, but I think if you love it when you're a kid or you're two or three or whatever age, it's something that's there for life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so fun. I didn't know that. That's great, great bit of history there. I love that. I'd love to see some of those turnips now.
Speaker 1:The carved ones. Turnips are incredibly hard to carve. My granny used to have us doing it when we were kids and we were just cutting our fingers, and when we discovered pumpkins, wow, it was a game changer.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah, you know, that's a good point. It's funny because, you know, I didn't want to push it too hard. I have a five-year-old son and I had some really great advice from a friend of mine who was, you know, already into parenthood when I was starting out, and his suggestion was, you know, just make art available, don't push it, don't make it into a chore, Just make it available. Make the crayons and the markers there, you know, visible. And so that's something that I've done and I've always kind of teased my son like, you know, hey, you want to, you want to draw a skull, you want to draw a skull, you know, and he never, he never really jumped on it until like age five, and then, out of the blue, he was just like I think I'm gonna draw one, and I was like okay, sure, you know, and I maybe mentioned it once every I don't know four or five months.
Speaker 2:You know, it was just like a silly thing. And then he started drawing them without any kind of like reference, which is cool because they're so warped and like wild looking. But yeah, I'll be interested to see. You know, I've already made like stickers out of them and stuff for fun and for him and but um, but it'll be interesting to see if that's something that stays as a motif for him or if it's just like a silly little thing that I pushed him to do one day.
Speaker 1:That's so cute. I would love to see some of those. Have you shared them, or is it just for you?
Speaker 2:No, I haven't shared them. There are a few out in the wild, for sure. I'll show you some. But no. I'm not opposed to posting about them, but I haven't.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm delighted that he's getting into it as well. So for yourself, for your own journey, I know that you have a graphic design background. That's what you studied, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it was a trip to London I think it was 2008 where you saw the skull in the Natural History Museum that you photographed and that has become the skull that we all know today. Is that all true?
Speaker 2:Yeah, very good, that's exactly true. It was a study abroad opportunity that I had for a month long condensed class on kind of like media. It was a class generally about media and it was a month long trip in London and yeah, it was fantastic. I we had so much free time on that trip it kind of blew my mind. It was like our teacher was just excited to be, as excited to be there as we were.
Speaker 2:So we would go and visit a you know a newspaper printing plant and then we'd go to a graphic design firm and then we went to a you know a newspaper business what have you? And we would go for a couple hours a day and do these kind of impromptu classes and then he would be like, okay, bye, and then he would go off, you know, to be with his friends or go to a show or what have you, and we just kind of be like, oh okay, what do we do? And at the time I knew, you know, graphic design was my chosen major and so I've never had an innate sense or ability to illustrate.
Speaker 1:So that's never been like a natural talent of mine.
Speaker 2:I don't just sit down and, like you know, I couldn't just draw something out of out of nothing. And so for my graphic design career, knowing that illustration is obviously a huge part of that, I was leaning on photographs for templates. So I knew that this trip would be a goldmine. I brought my SLR you know Canon, and I had it on me at all times and I would go in all the free time, I would go to all the museums and just photograph things. You know animals, architecture, anything in between and beyond, and I would categorize it. And I knew that the thousands of photos that I would take from this trip could be used years and years down the road. I mean, I very much understand and understood copyright law. I'm not going to grab off something off the internet, you know. And beyond that, just the knowing that you created something from scratch, you know, and so, or you know, partial, scratch. At this point I take the photo of the statue, the ornamentation on the statue, I can trace parts of it, warp the rest, you know, and I can make my own illustration out of that.
Speaker 2:So that trip, I spent a lot of time, at least a couple days, in the in the Natural History Museum in London across from the V&A. There and I yeah, I took so many photos and there was a display that was about evolution and it had an old, you know Neanderthal skull all the way up to like modern human. I took pictures of each of those and it was through glass. It was there's a lot of you know, a lot of things working against me. The lighting was kind of shit and the there was the reflection on the glass, this photo of this last most evolved skull. And you know, when I got home I just kept going back to that picture. There was something about the angle, the grittiness of the skull, the way that the you know enamel had kind of worn away from the teeth and the staining of it and the coloration and you know it was a perfectly crisp photo through the glass, no-transcript which way.
Speaker 2:But I was lucky in that I'd already been using that skull many times and it wasn't like a conscious decision of this is going to be my thing. It was just like this will be the first thing, this will be the thing I play with and I will take this skull and I'll break it down into something that's screen printable, because at the time I've been screen printing t shirts but not anything flat stock, really, not like paper or stickers and I was like, oh well, I have this screen printing, this very, very like dodgy screen printing setup for doing t shirts and such. I'm going to see if I can figure out how to do stickers and posters. And so I was using all t-shirt printing equipment and inks and everything and doing everything wrong, really, you know, because it was all trial and error. I never went to school for screen printing.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it was like how can I break this photo down into something that is pure black and white for screen printing? And so that really was the reason that I started breaking that photo down into graphic form. It wasn't so much like, oh, aesthetically this would be fun, it was out of necessity. It's like no, I'm screen printing, I have to break it down into a graphic form, pure black and white. So that's when I started playing with half toning it, filtering it in Photoshop, and then ultimately realizing that if I carved that photo, you know, in lino, lino, cutting it into linoleum or wood, then I could really warp it in an interesting way and get it black and white for screen print.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I know that you do your pieces by hand, so do I. So you do everything by hand and then you digitally clean them up. What is it about doing something by hand that you enjoy?
Speaker 2:I think there's. I get a lot of pride and I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. I think one of the reasons that I got into street art and screen printing I needed an escape from my graphic design career that I'd started. So I graduated college I was very excited about digital artwork. I spent lots of time creating digital artwork for fun stuff that no one's ever seen nothing that became street art. But when I got my first job, so I freelanced for about a year outside of college and then I got a job, a corporate job as a designer like classic in a cubicle amazing job, don't get me wrong. Like I met so many amazing people, got to work on some really interesting projects.
Speaker 2:I did that for four years, but after a couple of years in it was like I needed some kind of. Maybe it was only a year in. I was like I need some kind of escape from staring at a screen, and all the work I was doing in graphic design was all remaining digital for the most part, and so there wasn't any kind of tactile satisfaction coming out of it. It was just like I was happy doing it. But also I needed to do something handmade too. I don't know, you know, if it was just so much digital that I've that's what pushed me towards that, or if I always had like an innate you know desire to do things by hand.
Speaker 2:But I think I can definitely credit my mom a bit in the need for handmade art. She my whole life has been a scrapbooking nerd and a scrapbooking teacher. So like our, literally our the whole bottom of our house growing up was like a scrapbooking store, and also they taught. She taught scrapbooking classes and had hangouts with all of her friends, and so I was always rating her stash of stickers, paper using her paper cutter and punches, and so I think that probably made an impact on me, even subconsciously, you know, loving to do all that from a young age by hand. And so when I was making these stickers and posters by hand, just that you know, every time pulling the screen up or every time pressing that block down and getting you know it's even 15 years later now it's exciting every time. So it's different in some way. Maybe it's the color or the way that that piece of art has been exposed, or the color way or what have you. It's just, it's so satisfying to know that you've made something by hand. And then it's here, it's right here.
Speaker 1:You know, in your hand you could hold it yeah, definitely, and it's interesting what you just said about your mom, that she had an influence because it was around you and it was accessible. And that goes back to what you said about your son. Because he has these things around him now, it's natural for him to become interested.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and you know, when I made the stickers for him it was, it was cool because you know he's always kind of noticed me putting things up, and so now that he has something that he can put up, you know it's extra fun and he can feel more involved. And I'm definitely waiting. I don't know why I'm waiting, but like I'm interested in seeing when the time comes that you know he wants to maybe play with the printing side of you know it's all here, it's all available to him. He's in my shop all the time. He's definitely painted lots of my little resin skulls with me. I've had him do block carving with me on some of that really soft pink linoleum that Speedball makes, you know, and so we've done a lot of little crafts. But yeah, it'll be really fun to see if he gets into the printmaking side of things, if there's any interest there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you know, yeah, just keeping it available having it be here, not pushing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll see. Well, let's talk about your move to the streets. You started creating this art using your tactile process and then digitalizing, and at what point were you like I'm gonna go take this to the streets. And also I would love to hear about your first time putting up street art. Were you scared?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so great questions. I started doing what I would consider street art probably around 2008, but not really knowing that I was doing street art. So it's interesting. So this is like I had some assignments in college that I really liked and they were called site-specific. My teacher was basically giving us street art assignments and I don't even think they knew this, but one of the projects was or a few of these was like make art that has to belong somewhere. It doesn't make sense unless it's in this particular place.
Speaker 2:And I had always loved stickers and I never considered making them. I always collected them my whole childhood. So I thought, ooh, I'll make a sticker and I took some clip art. It was like it's going to sound weird until it all comes to fruition, but like it was a piece of clip art of a pair of lungs and I put them on an arrow going upward and then the text said something along the lines of littering is a no, no, but killing yourself is a-okay. And I put those stickers on cigarette butt receptacles pointing up to where you popped in the butt. So I put those all over campus and beyond, and that was the first sticker that I made.
Speaker 2:And then I also made these fun illustrations of people interacting with a particular subject in school and I installed them in the different areas on campus without saying anything, without getting permission. It was like, for example, a silhouetted person with a pen and then a big scribble all around them, and it was like, oh okay, I'll get a ladder and I'll install that. Cut that out and install that in the art department. On the math, I had like hundreds of little pieces of paper with like little equations, and then I had a person with like a pen and I went to a professor that I really liked. He didn't know it was me who did this, but I installed it on his whole door, so his whole door was like a little person, and then a ton of mathematical equations and I didn't tell him and he ended up leaving it there, which is so cool. I did one for the chemistry department, one for the weightlifting, etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:So that was probably the first street art I ever did without knowing that I was doing street art, and so I think that kind of lit a fire subconsciously, because, you know, then I finished school, I was definitely playing around a little bit with spray painting, stencils. I did some work in the studio, like in school, and had a little mini art show of like canvases that I'd spray painted with stencils a lot of skulls, but nothing like what I would make later on and then stencils in the street I remember doing. The first stencil I did in the street was an electrical outlet. Uh, it was a two-layer stencil. I just thought it was funny. Like I went to a public park and I just spray painted an electrical outlet on like a piece of playground equipment. I think like the faintest shadow of it is still there. You know like what 20 years later? But the the big, the big bang for me with regard to like getting into street art and knowing that's where I'm at.
Speaker 2:It was a trip that my girlfriend at the time wife now took with me in 2009 after we graduated school. We did kind of the classic american backpacking through europe trip, and so we went and just I brought my camera. I knew I was going to be taking a lot of pictures for my graphic design library and we went to, we went all over. We went to London, we went to Scotland, we went to France, we went to Spain, we went to Italy and I just I couldn't ignore the street art. The street art was everywhere. You can live your whole life in America and a lot of places and not even see the street art or not notice it.
Speaker 2:You're kind of numb to it or it's white noise for you, but when you're in some of these big cities like Barcelona and London, it's just impossible to ignore, and so I really became aware of it, and when I came home, my eye was now trained to looking at places that I never looked, like the back of a street sign or going into an alleyway and looking at the side of an electrical box or really examining a bike rack, you know it's like, oh, these things are covered. There's stickers here too. So that was like my big thing. When I came home and saw that there was street art in Oregon and Portland as well, I was like, okay, yeah, I want to do this too.
Speaker 1:And I want to like, really do it not, you know not a little bit.
Speaker 2:I want to really dive into this and so I probably did street art for about six months before I met anyone in the scene. I was doing it with a friend of mine that I grew up with and him and I were just. We were in all the wrong neighborhoods using all the wrong techniques. I mean, like we were using we were making wheat paste on the stove and there's nothing wrong with that. But if anyone's done that, you know it's like it rots really quickly and it doesn't adhere that great. We were using like medical gloves and we had it in like bags and we were like slopping it on the wall. It was just ridiculous. It's so inefficient and the areas we were hitting were all like like in Portland, the West side is really not somewhere you hit the West side of the river it's like very touristy. You know it's where all the big banks are and the hotels and it's just like nothing's going to ride over there. But we didn't. That's the part of Portland we knew at the time. So it was like our stuff was getting buffed immediately and I think I don't have any like super crisp memories of that time. It was like it was just having fun. It was, it was printing stuff that the inks we were using were wrong, so everything was fading and it was just, like you know, a lot of trial and error. But the memory that I have that sticks with me is I started realizing that there was a social media presence in the street art world and that kind of woke me up to the Portland scene.
Speaker 2:So, for example, I was on Flickr from college. Flickr at the time was, you know, people still use it, of course, but, like at the time, it was really the social media platform for artists and we were really just marketing our work to other artists. It was like a way to show off your portfolio to other artists. And so I remember being on there and looking at the sidebar of groups and being like what's this groups thing? Oh, it's like groups of people that are brought together by a certain community, certain theme, and I was like I wonder if there's a street art group here. And sure enough, there was not just a street art sticker group, there was one specifically for Portland, oregon, and I clicked in there and I started seeing people's names that I recognized because I'd seen their stickers on the street. And I clicked in there and I started seeing people's names that I recognized because I'd seen their stickers on the street and I was just like, oh my gosh, like these are those people I've been seeing around. And I sent a couple messages to those people, direct messages, and was just like, hey, I, you know, have seen your work around, I love your work. Like, do you want to hang out?
Speaker 2:I met up with one of those people the very next night and we met and we had a pint and we traded stickers and we went out bombing and we went out till literally three in the morning that night. Like I just met this person and we went out till three in the morning. We went out and put up so many stickers that we had to go back to his circle, back to his house, so he could grab more. And uh, and so that was when it was like here's the areas to hit.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden it was like, oh, I've been hitting the wrong areas. Like these are the cool spots, these are, oh, there's way more stickers over here. And it was just like utter excitement, pure joy. You know, that was the beginning of going out like every week for hours and hours and I just kept meeting more and more people in the scene. It was like a domino effect. I started realizing where the shows were and meeting more people that way. And then you know, because now I was on Flickr and I was finding the groups, I was able to connect with more artists and it was just a very, very organic but quick domino effect.
Speaker 1:The thing that is so incredible about street art is the community behind it and how it's a worldwide community. Street art is the community behind it and how it's a worldwide community. You get to know people online that you might never meet in person and you might not know anything about them, because they don't show their face and they don't use their real name. It's whatever they are presenting. You connect with that for whatever reason. You just have this connection, and not only that. People are generally so supportive of each other and they love to see a new artist come along and coming up and they want to support them and encourage them, and that's really quite unique.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think that the reputation that the Portland scene has gotten over the years has been a great one of, like you know, warm community and collaboration. I've felt that way, you know, in the street art community everywhere I've traveled to, though. I mean it's like there's always a couch to sleep on, there's always someone who can, who is there to take you out. They've already got the bucket of paste and the brush in the back of their car, you know. I mean I can't tell you how many times I've just gone into a new city and had someone just be like here you go, you know, red carpet treatment of like this is where we're going to go. Here's a great spot to grab pizza. And then we're going to go all these other neighborhoods and let's meet this artist over here. Here's a neat gallery that we can check out too. You know, here's where you want to buy your gear, if you need more stuff. And then I've, on the other end of that, I've had the opportunity to do the same thing for other people who've traveled in and it thing for other people who've traveled in, and it is such a cool feeling.
Speaker 2:I think that, by and large, yeah, the street art community is, is not a gatekeepy community. It's very much like uh, I've spent many hours on instagram, dm, just like giving people tips on how to get started with screen printing and how do I figure out what my character is and what. What's your recipe for wheat paste and how do you get stickers up so high, and it's just fun to share that you. And what's your recipe for wheat paste and how do you get stickers up so high, and it's just fun to share that. You know. It's just good for the scene for everyone to know those things because it just makes for a better, you know, global street art scene.
Speaker 1:Well, I would like to call out that you are particularly helpful, that people are supportive. You know people will put you up, they'll tag you. People like D7, who I know you know well as well, is so incredibly supportive. He's an absolute legend and if he sees some of your art anywhere and somebody's taking a picture and you're not credited because they don't know who you are, he'll always tag and say hey, this is this person Super, super helpful and super kind.
Speaker 1:There's various levels of support that you can get in the street art community, and you personally were super helpful to me recently because I recently started getting into the resin game. It's very messy and too clumsy for it, I think, but I'm having a lot of fun right now. When I had told you what I was doing, you not only were like that's great, keep going, you gave me loads of advice, which I'm so grateful for. But that is support that not everybody gets or gives. So thank you for that, and it's wonderful to hear that you're helping lots and lots of people behind the scenes as well, because when you're in the DMs, that's what you don't see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. No, I appreciate that. I don't know. I think that also probably is a credit to my mom, because she not only with the scrapbooking, because that was always her sidekick she was a teacher teacher too and she loved teaching. I definitely think I got that from her. I love sharing things that I've learned. So doing it online is cool because I learn a lot from people online as well. I love helping other people, but I get so much help from people as well. I love doing it in person too. I mean I've taken on let's see at this point four apprentices over the years. That is so cool and satisfying too to just like have someone that's so excited about learning screen printing and then you know you can kind of take them through the process in person. Even more satisfying than you know, helping someone over the internet is seeing the progression and stuff and yeah, it's just very satisfying, very fun.
Speaker 2:Gosh, yeah, people like D7. I mean I was just chatting with him this morning. Actually, he's such a sweetheart. I mean you probably know this, but the way that he got started in street art was he would literally walk around and fix other people's posters. It's like incredible. What a testament to like his kindness and his courtesy and his level of respect and you know probably years of just going around fixing the corners of little people's pastes with his little pot of wheat paste and little brush, before he even was like yeah, I'm already doing this, why don't I just join in the fun? But yeah, there's just so many cool people in the street art world, it's just incredible yeah, yeah, there really is.
Speaker 1:And he is somebody who is particularly kind and helpful. And when I say that he is so good for crediting people and getting acknowledging them, he is also extremely helpful in the DMs as well and gives loads of advice. He's a legend. He's so kind.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yeah. And one of the things I really respect about him, which is worth repeat, is he's all about quality, not quantity. I think a lot of people it's just like go, go, go, go go, and I'll be getting up with him all day and he'll have put up five pieces. But those five pieces are perfect. The location and the size and just everything about it is so well thought out. That comes from many years of trial and error and work ethic and yeah, I just yeah. I love that guy?
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's a legend. So the Portland scene that you've mentioned exactly what you said street art, if you're in a city, is probably all around you. I lived in Brick Lane for three years. You can't help but see it and get inspired by it. But unless you're in an area like that, you kind of don't really see the stickers. There's stickers everywhere you go, but you don't see them unless you've had your eyes opened to them. Portland actually is one of the first places that I ever traveled to where I was like I love this place. It was so arty.
Speaker 1:When you talk about sleeping on couches, when I went to Portland it was 10 or 11 years ago now. I'd been living in America and I was in my last month of my visa, so I couldn't work anymore, but I could travel. I was I have to say this slowly because my accent people think I'm saying kite surfing and I wasn't kite surfing, I was couch surfing. But when I say it with my accent couch surfing it sounds like I was surfing on kites, some couch surfing off the west coast of America.
Speaker 1:I went to Portland it was October, so it was very autumnal. It was fall, halloween, everything, pumpkins everywhere. I was in heaven. I had the best time there and I've lived in many different countries, many different cities. I've traveled to many countries all over the world. There's very few places where I have ever been, where I've been like I could live here, but it was one of those places where it was really inspiring and there was so much art everywhere. That was where I had my eyes opened to all of the art that's around and available for us. I know that Portland and again please correct me if I've got anything wrong but Portland, from what I had heard, had been massively buffed recently and I would just love to hear a little bit more about all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I agree, Portland has like a very homey, very homey, warm kind of vibe, especially if you're in the right areas, like on the east side of the river it is. It reminds me of some of the places that I really love in England. You just have like a very cozy feeling. But yeah, as far as the street art goes, I mean it's been a very organic growth over the years, I mean in like 2010,. When I started, there was about five active people. Then, you know, within a couple years it was up to 15. And then it was up to like 30. And now, who knows? I mean it's probably gosh, it's probably up there with like 40 or 50 people who are. It looks like more. And the reason for that, I've always maintained, is because of the screen printing.
Speaker 2:People in Portland have always been, since the beginning, more apt to do screen printing than other cities. I think it's just just it was kind of a domino effect in itself, where people who were starting out were like, oh, how do you make stickers? And people like, oh, we screen print them. Oh, okay, that's what I'll do too. It was just like that's what you do and it's expensive and takes, but it's cool because when you screen print your stickers, you're printing a sheet, you've got all the space to put all these different designs and sizes and then you can do different colors of inks and vinyls and all of a sudden a scene that is 40 people looks like a scene of 200 people because of the variety and color and size and all that stuff. So the Portland scene it has grown exponentially. Yeah, so our scene.
Speaker 2:We have the main streets, streets like Hawthorne, streets like Alberta, streets like Mississippi and Belmont these scenes that have been running for a long time but also are the more popular streets and tend to get buffed every once in a while. But also there are certain streets like specifically like Mississippi Street, for example, where it's been running gosh, like you used to be able to go there and see 15 years worth of stickers. Then, you know, at one point a couple years ago, unfortunately, the buff came through super hard and just took everything out and it was really sad. Unfortunately, the new buffing technique of just spraying everything gray with a matte spray paint has been a pretty big bummer for people who appreciate street art and the people who are active in the scene.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it is difficult. There are some streets that are hard to even walk down these days because they just get the buff gets maintained so hard. But you know there's always the the cutty spots in Portland that will run forever, uh. But yeah, it's definitely been a big cat and mouse game the last few years. There are certain areas that, to be honest with you, I just avoid now because either it's the city or it's local business owners or vigilantes. We do have some vigilantes out right now that are just retired old dudes and they just walk around and that's what they do in their retirement.
Speaker 2:It's like a really sad I don't know sad hobby to have hobby, to deprive people of free art yeah, it's weird and people have, like, like, friends of mine have actually caught them in the act and they're just salty and just upset and they just, you know, they see it as a, they see it through like a really negative lens I think they're seeing it still as like through the broken windows theory lens of like, oh, you know, all this, all these stickers, it just, you know, it's just going to attract crime and it's bad behavior and, you know, makes everything look bad. And it's funny because I think one of the things I love about London so much and most European cities that I've been bombing in is there's usually two types of people that you run into when you're putting up street art. One is the people who actively like it. They stop and they say, oh, my gosh, that's so cool. Oh, can I have a sticker? Oh, yeah, sure you know. And then the second one is people who don't care. They just going on with their day, they don't, they just walk on by.
Speaker 2:And in most American cities it's three big groups. There's the group that likes it, there's the group that doesn't care and goes on with their day, but then there's a big group of people who they actively want to stop and give you a hard time. Yeah, I've been chased by many random vigilante or business owner years ago. It's not fun, I don't understand. Yeah, it's an interesting, interesting thing, you know. I mean the back of a street sign. I don't know, it's silly. To me it's like the back of a street sign and bike rack and a side of an electrical box. These are all things paid for by tax dollars, you know. Logically, we all own them, you know, and there's nothing that, by decorating them, deters their functionality.
Speaker 2:So I personally think it's silly that you can't put a sticker on the back of a street sign. I think it's crazy to me that that would be something that the city would spend time and money to remove or to give someone a ticket over or arrest someone for it.
Speaker 1:I agree. How do you deal with those interactions when you do have them?
Speaker 2:De-escalation. I mean these days that really doesn't happen. I'm very, very, very, very like paranoid person, you know.
Speaker 2:I'm usually not doing anything unless there's no one around. But yeah, no, in the past, when there's those interactions, it's just get out of the situation. You know you're not going to change their mind, unfortunately. I mean there was one situation where this drunk guy was like coming out of a bar and he thought we were stealing cars. Because we were like crouched around a dumpster and it was near a bunch of cars, he thought we were stealing cars and he was just like he was calling the cops on us because he thought we were stealing cars and it wasn't like we were going to be like no, we're not doing that crime, we're doing a different crime. You know what I mean. So we just I just got out of that situation, you know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, usually if it's just someone yelling at us or something, it's like I just walk away, get out of there because they've made up their mind. You know they're probably a narrow minded person. I've tried to have those conversations with people. Usually it person. I've tried to have those conversations with people. Usually it's a futile exercise, sadly. I've definitely had that argument with people online as well but I think online it's even worse.
Speaker 1:Keyboard warriors.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:For sure. Do you think the buffing will deter new people from starting?
Speaker 2:Oh good question. I don't think so. I think there's so much with the culture of street art beyond just getting up. I mean, getting up is definitely, in my opinion, like the most pure form of street art, right, but there's also trading, there's collaborating, there's doing installs, there's doing art shows, you know, meeting up and hanging out. I mean, I think that there's always going to be, you know, opportunities, and so I definitely hope that that wouldn't deter people.
Speaker 2:I think that there's a lot of us there's a lot of passion behind what street artists do, and so I can't see that being a deterrent really, and I don't see how there could be that much buffing to really deter that. To be honest with you.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with you. I think getting up is the most pure form of expression because I said this on a different podcast recently but it is somebody who has something that they want to say so badly that they're willing to take a chance and potentially get in trouble to say it, but they must say it and they must express it, and I think that's so powerful. Is there a particular piece that has meant a lot to you over the years? Is there one that stands out that felt really important?
Speaker 2:Ooh, you know it's a good question. It's a hard one for me to answer because my work is so. It really comes from my graphic design background, in that most of my work is just they're essentially symbols and something that I love, but not something that necessarily has a message, whether it be political or religious or, you know, opinion based on anything in particular. It's more about aesthetics, if I'm being honest, and so you know, there have been certain images that I know when I make a new skull or a new design or something, sometimes I'm usually not sure until I put it up whether it will be something that lasts or whether it's just something that's a chapter in my journey, and then it's like I move on to something else. There are so many designs that I'll never print again because it was fun while I did it and I got it up a few times, but it's like okay, now I'm bored of it. You know, similarly, the way that I wear blank clothing most of the time, I get bored of my art so quickly and the simpler and you know pure in that way that it is the longer I'm going to love it and the more I'm going to appreciate it and it's going to have like a stronger impact on me, and so the designs that I love the most are like my, what I call my OG, my original skull, and my, my cannonballing skeleton. And the reason for those two images being images that will always be something that I print and have fun putting up is you know, the skull, is?
Speaker 2:It literally took 10 years to get to where it is now. I mean, I think I only stopped evolving it a few years ago and it went through. You know, I'm going to redraw it from the original photo little carpet, then I'll print that, then I'll take that and I'll recarve that and I'll recarve that and I'll recarve that and I'll recarve that and keep doing those edits. And it got to a point where I was just like, oh, it's there.
Speaker 2:It took me that long but it's there. And I think you know all the way down to the shape of it that floats well on a surface, like the same thing with the cannonball. It's a very organic process of evolution with my project and the cannonballing skeleton I love so much because he belongs in a floating environment, like I don't particularly like harsh edges and I don't particularly like images that feel like they're floating unnaturally, and so to have him kind of cannonballing and jumping across a sign or what have you, it just makes sense to float in that way, and those are very simple images you know, there's not a whole lot of bells and whistles there and so that's why they stand the test of time.
Speaker 2:For me there have been a few designs over the years that I've done that had kind of a message. I mean, art is not a crime unless you do it right was just like kind of a silly witty. Like you know, funny thing that something is put up or the way it fits, there's a silly factor, a funny factor there.
Speaker 2:I like giving someone a smile or making someone even making someone you know give you the classic dad joke face.
Speaker 2:You know it's like that's fun for me.
Speaker 2:The most serious I've gotten with my art was probably towards the beginning, which was a sticker that I made that said something's wrong we've all got cancer and I put that up for a while.
Speaker 2:It was a little too serious for me and I think that's why I kind of left it behind. But but it was, you know, an important part, because you know, part of the reason that I I think my interest in kind of the morbid style art was on the rise was me and my family had a pretty rough medical past and so a lot of cancer and tumors, all sorts of scary stuff that kind of hit our family all at once and so there was a time that that was influencing my work quite a bit, yeah. And then I kind of came out of that and wanted art to do something different for me. I wanted it to be fun and light and not be heavy political and you know and I there's a place for that and I appreciate it and respect it and I want to see it. But for me personally, art has always been like more of an escape.
Speaker 1:I like that. You played with that, though, and I'm sorry to hear about that family history and that it was a difficult time. I'm glad that everything's okay now and that it's come out the other end. I think it's interesting that you channeled it and you dealt with it and you processed it with this and then, when things got better, you're now able to focus on the more fun things. When we talk about how recognisable your work is, your work is so recognisable, so interesting, that it's had this evolution.
Speaker 1:When I first started doing street art and started doing stickers, I was saying to my boyfriend, who's also a street artist we were talking about your art and we became fans really early on. We were like this guy is prolific, he is probably the most up artist in London, and then we found out you're not even in London. That's how prolific you are. You have so much art everywhere.
Speaker 1:This group that I run it's all sober activities. It's for people who are sober and want to do not even people who are sober, people who want to do an activity that doesn't involve going to the pub or alcohol. So this was one thing I was like oh, I can take them on a tour and show them around Brick Lane. That's free, that'll be fun and it's a sober activity. So I took them around and at the first spot I pointed out this is RxSkulls and he's an artist. His work is super distinctive. Every spot we went to, by the end of it, the group were like look, there's RxSkulls again. So it's so recognizable and truly prolific. Did you set out with that goal or did it just kind of happen?
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Yeah, you know there was definitely a desire there to get it everywhere. I mean, that was definitely, and still is, a huge goal and I understood that concept well. And when I got into street art, it was very clear to me that it was graphic design and I was creating a brand and there's so many ways that I can tweak this but not pull it apart to the point where it breaks. And I knew that I didn't want to put my name on everything. You know nothing wrong with that at all, but for me, I'm coming at it like it's a logo and it doesn't need a name on it because the recognizability and gestalt and the power there is in the image I never cared that anyone would know who.
Speaker 1:I am.
Speaker 2:You know, that's the beauty of street art too. Like people see my work, they see my work, and that's it. When you're a fine artist and someone says your name, they're oftentimes going to visualize that person's face in there. In my opinion, it kind of takes away from the work itself and the purity of that work, and so my goal was definitely to have something that was immediately recognizable, but not the same thing over and over to the point where it's boring and I wanted it as many places as possible.
Speaker 2:And I know that when I travel somewhere, if I get up 100% of the work that I get up, I know that if I'm lucky, a few months later maybe half of it's still there, but probably more like a third, and then a couple years down the road I'm lucky if 15 to 20% is still running. So when I go somewhere, you know, my friends kind of know this about me and my travel mates, they, they like to tease me because I'm the one who brings way too much shit, just way too much, just a brutal ridiculous like oh, what's he got now, let's see, let's see what he packed. It's definitely like the ongoing joke, you know. I mean I'll travel with nine tubes of caulking for putting up resin installs and half my bag is 30 pounds because it's, you know, literally 100 plastic resin installs, and then I've got literally triple the amount of posters that I'm going to physically be able to put up. But I come from that like kind of Boy Scout motto of like being prepared, and I also have a little bit of anxiety around not having enough and like what, if, what, if, what, if, and so the fact that my work has been prolific is, I think, comes from that, that knowing that you know stuff's going to disappear. That's just part of the game, and so the more I put up, the more is going to survive. And then just the different ways of getting up. I've always just loved that there are, so there's endless possibilities of ways to get up. You know, it's like it used to be when I you know, I kind of joke at how stressful it kind of is to get up now because I love to do so many different things and play with so many mediums.
Speaker 2:It used to be so simple. I would screen print a sticker sheet, cut them out with some scissors, go put up the stickers, and that was it your pocket. You need one pocket for that. You know what I mean. And now when I go travel or what have you, it's like ridiculous, because I've got a backpack and that backpack has the caulking and it has the installs and it has my big posters. And then I've got the bag over here with the five gallon bucket and the brush, and then you have the pole and then you have the brush that goes onto the pole and then you've got your, your messenger bag and that's got all your stickers in it, but you have to have a different pocket for each kind of sticker. So it's like here's your eggshells, here's your transparent stickers, here's your sign killers, here's your uh, big eggshells, here's your borderless vinyl cutouts. Oh my god, it's so silly. But now when I walk around, it's like you're kind of like switched on for all the different things that you have packed on you and I.
Speaker 2:I kind of get a little anxiety and stressed out about it, because I'm like I'm somewhere new and it's exciting and it's fun, and it's like, oh god, what am I gonna do? Like you know so. So I get pretty crazy when it gets to prepping for a trip. I really enjoy it, but I also stress myself out.
Speaker 2:I mean to the point where I'll take all my stickers and I'll sit there at a table and I'll get a nice movie on, because it's going to take me a while, and I will have them all spread out on a table and I will literally go down the line with the different kinds of stickers. Here's all my pile of of skeletons, here's my pile of this skull and this skull, and this is my other skeletons and these are my ones that kind of come out of the edge of something and etc. Etc. I'll just go and grab one at a time and make piles and bag them so that as I'm walking around I know that when I grab one out of my pocket it's a different one each time and I'm putting them up in even amounts, so it's not like one street has all the same shit. So that definitely lends itself into what you see out and about. I'm very, very overly conscious about how I do it.
Speaker 1:Do you have so many different styles? I am crazy about your little resin installs. I would love to hear a little bit more about that. But just before I do move on to that, I fully appreciate the struggle of traveling abroad with all of the art that you want to take and get up. Like I said, luckily my boyfriend is also a street artist, so he understands, when we're packing for a trip, that we are bringing brushes, buckets and we are bringing anything that we can sticker poles that he's homemade. Yeah, it's very fun, I love that. So your resin you can make something that's a couple of centimeters big but it's so distinctively RxGulls, and I would just love to hear about your journey into resin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, resin has been such a huge blessing. I just love it so much. It's so fun for so many reasons. One is just taking something that has been 2D for all these years and all of a sudden it's now quite literally coming out at you and, like you said, it separates itself from the other street art around. And I think, on a pure level, what are we trying to do as street artists?
Speaker 2:We're trying to grab your attention just for a second, when you can kind of literally come out at someone. That's pretty powerful. But aside from that, just the act of making this like it's been something new and fun for me. I got to a point with screen printing. I'm not going to say that there's not more I can learn. Oh my gosh, of course there is. But I'm 15 years into the screen printing game and I guess I just kind of needed something new. I needed to be challenged again a little bit more.
Speaker 2:And so, starting with a completely new medium so satisfying to just have that kind of struggle again and it's been a struggle. I mean, there's just so much to learn. It's 100% different. And so all the way from how do I make this 2D image into a 3D image and big shout out to my friend Slam 3D Print. She is fantastic and she went back and forth with me many times to get my 2D images into a 3D form, which I didn't even know what it would look like. I can't think in those terms.
Speaker 2:And then so learning how to make molds Again, shout out to my friend Creeper Masks. And then my friend Stephanie, who taught me so much and continue to work with me. And so sometimes my friend Stephanie will make molds for me. Sometimes I will make a mold, but silicone molds and what kind of resin to use and how to mix the pigments in and how can I layer things, and it's just utter play, which reminds me of what it was like when I first started screen printing, where it was like learning all these things, making all these mistakes and a lot of growth in a short amount of time.
Speaker 2:Just so exciting. And the fact that I can use the project to pay for the project is also really satisfying, because it's expensive. As you know, resin is very expensive. You know I'm going through glue like nobody's business. You know pigments all the way down to popsicle sticks and cups and you know. And so if I can sink a magnet into a batch of these and sell those to buy the next batch of resin, fantastic, it is so versatile, much like screen printing.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know I can make an install that will be a magnet or have a command strip on it that I could put somewhere that I'm not so sure. I don't want to, like you know, mess with someone's personal private property, but hey, I'll put a command strip, one there that's not going to do any damage. And then you know all the way up to, like this is construction adhesive caulk that is not meant to come off. Okay, now I can get a spot where it's like you're not going to get that off unless you bring a hammer into the street, and so it's been so satisfying. It's like having a pocket full of stickers that you made and then having a bag full of these like colorful resin installs, and it's just they're fun for different reasons. They're equally fun, but it just feels like I've doubled the amount of fun that I have with street art since I got into resin. It just has been so awesome, and my my goal now is to just get as many of my friends doing it as possible. So I have been like really pushing my friends in as nice a way as possible. Like I have a person for you over here. This can be your mold person. Okay, I can show you this. We're going to come to my studio. We're going to. Let's have resin parties. We're all going to, like you know, put our masks on and pour resin together, and we can, you know. But we can collaborate and smash our little guys together and then we can go out.
Speaker 2:You know, I just, I just think it's the next. This sounds arrogant, but I just, I just hope it's the next kind of evolution in Portland street art and street art beyond. I just feel like I'm definitely not the first one to do it. Oh my gosh, no way. There were people in Portland doing this 10 years ago. It just never felt like it's really hit. It doesn't feel like it's gotten its stride until recently and I'm not saying it's because of me, it's not there are a lot of people that are doing street art, 3d street art kind of at the same time in Portland you know, and it just feels like installs on telephone poles and beyond like are just on the rise in the scene in general and definitely in Portland.
Speaker 2:But it just feels like I I got into it at the right time, I'm in on it when everyone else is kind of in on it too, and it just feels like another extension of the community and I hope that it continues. I know I'm going to keep pushing it.
Speaker 2:I know that. You know it's one of those things where I can tell I'm never going to not do it. You know there's some of those things that you do, like when I started getting into leatherworking I love leatherworking, but like I don't know if I'll do it forever and I've definitely like gone down quite a bit to like 10% of what I was doing before. Resin is like I'm perfectly sure I'm going to be doing it forever and at this level, if not more. So I think it just comes down to what's fun and then just do that. It's like the biggest piece of advice I've ever given to anybody. It's like just play and then whatever's the most fun, just push that thing.
Speaker 1:Don't do it, because don't do this one thing because it's making you more money than this other thing. Just push the fun thing. That's what it's supposed to be. That is excellent advice and leads me perfectly into my next question what advice would you give to new artists other than the advice you've just shared?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one piece of advice that a lot of people don't like to hear and I want to make sure that I'm giving the piece of advice for the right reason is, if you can, don't monetize your work right away, like hold off on that. You know, I did it not on purpose. I didn't do that on purpose, but I did it on accident and I'm so glad I did because I can see in retrospect how powerful that was for me. But a lot of people will be like, oh, this is, I'm gonna have my cake needed to, I'm gonna jump into street art and then monetize immediately, open up an online store, start retailing everything, and it's like you can do that cool, and I know a lot of people need to do that. I get that, I respect that, but for some people it can influence the trajectory of your project in a negative way.
Speaker 2:There was a time when I was making some silly skulls that were like a poke at the stereotypical Portland hipster. So I had like a you know a stereotypical male skull with like a particular, like shaved side haircut and, you know, floopy on the top and you know big stretched ears and nose ring and you know certain facial hair going around here and etc, etc. And then there was the cropped bangs on the stereotypical female one with the short bobbed hair and etc. Etc. And I just did it as like a bit of a joke and people really liked them and I kind of got over the joke pretty quickly and I was just like on for the next thing. But I kept making them because people were buying them. And then I got to a point where I was just like why am I printing this? I don't like it anymore. It's boring to me.
Speaker 2:And I just realized like I wouldn't be printing this if it wasn't for the fact that I'm selling them and I was like, well, that's not the right reason for me. So I stopped and I haven't printed them in like 10 years. But I think that if you start street art with that in your mind like I have to be able to sell this then all of a sudden you can kind of get off track and you can start only making what's selling versus what's fun, and then it feels like a job, and you do not want street art to be like a job. So that would be. My biggest piece of advice is just have fun with it. Let the project take you where it naturally, organically wants to go.
Speaker 2:Don't put any pressure on yourself about it. Don't think that you have to have a thing. Don't think that you have to have a particularly tightly branded character. You know, don't push that on yourself. Just do what's fun, and if you want to do a completely different other side project, two weeks later, do it. And if you want to drop this one, drop it. If you want to do them the same time, cool. Two weeks later, do it. And if you want to drop this one, drop it. If you want to do them the same time, cool. But like you'll always find your thing if you just keep having fun and keep doing it. It might take 10 years, it might take two weeks, but yeah, just don't put that pressure on yourself, just like do whatever's fun.
Speaker 1:I love that, and talking about a fun job and talking about art being something that is fun can be a job also. I know that you have an incredible print studio and you actually create stickers and prints for other artists. That is something that's so cool, because you get to use your own creativity, but you also get to inspire and get somebody else excited with work that they can go out immediately and they can get up, so people have the power to play with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. You know that was another organic growth for us. I mean, when I was a designer, I was probably a couple of years into my street art project and I was, you know, posting about how I was screen printing my stickers. And it just people started asking me unprompted like, hey, you're printing your own stickers, can you print my stickers too? And it was like, oh yeah, I guess I could do that, you know, make a little like side hustle here, and I could. You know that'll be fun, and then I could have some more money for art supplies and all right, let's do this. And so I just organically started printing for other people. And it was like evenings and weekends. It just, you know, the more you do it just like street art, the more attention that gets on it, naturally. And so I was printing for more and more and more people. And then, after about five years of being a graphic designer, I was just like, well, shoot, I really love this sticker printing thing and I've got a pretty good amount of people I'm doing stickers for and let's just try this. And so it was a good couple years of, just like you know, completely breaking even and just barely making it, and then you get to a point where it's like, oh okay, cool, now I can afford to like, maybe go to a movie every once in a while too, you know, you know, and beyond just buying groceries, and so it was again a very long organic process.
Speaker 2:But but yeah, I just the shop, our shop. Um, I work with, uh, two people Miss Too Fake and Not Cool. They are incredible human beings. I'm like, so lucky to work with Not Cool was my first apprentice that I ever had in the shop and he is our kind of our resident printer, so he runs the presses. And then Miss Too Fake does our digital stuff and our cutting machines and our graphic design work, and we just are super passionate about it. I think that's the secret, you know, we just love it. Like it's just every time we get a new sticker job for someone to print, it's like it's like we're playing, and so we're very, very lucky. And you know, beyond, that, like I'd say, 90% of the printing that we do is for artists, which is incredible. I mean, I don't think I don't think many other sticker printers out there can say that we love to print for everybody, but it's just happened to be because we're so in the art community so deep and for so long that those are the people who come to us and we just love it. And so, yeah, we do the screen printed stickers for people and then we also now do digital full color stickers for people, and we've done eggshells and we've done all sorts of fun materials.
Speaker 2:And one of the ways that we kind of got into the printing in early on was doing what's called gang running, which some people think we coined that term. It's actually a really longstanding term in the printmaking world. A gang run essentially is where you gang up lots of art on the same sheet and you print it all at once. And that's why traditionally it's taken many months to get your sticker order. Like if you were to make a sticker order 15 years ago, it would take like two months to get your sticker order. And it's because these big companies are waiting to get enough orders to fill a giant sheet and then they print them all. So if you're first on that list, you might be waiting two months, and if you're last on that list, maybe you only waited a week. But it's more efficient for the print shop. And so my idea was well, let's do gang runs, but let's theme them, let's make them into particular themes because it's fun, you know, and so we'll do a Halloween-themed gang run, we'll do a, you know, a 3D gang run where it's red and blue offset inks, and let's do a gang run all on transparent vinyl, that's like transparent colored vinyl, and let's use gold ink.
Speaker 2:And so it was fun because it was a way for people to. It was an accessible way for people to get their artwork screen printed without having to, like, buy a big, expensive sticker job. That was the other thing. Like back in the day, your minimum order was like a couple hundred bucks. We're all like in our early 20s. We couldn't afford that. And even if you could, you end up with a thousand of the same design over and over. The same design, the same colorway, the same size. And so what we did with the gang run was was like, you know, 25 bucks you get a hundred stickers. Print it in this theme. And it was so fun because that was like really the beginning of our journey as a, as a sticker shop. And now we're at a point now where we you know we'd still do the gang runs we do the custom jobs with screen printing and digital. And then finally, after 15 years of like only doing work via word of mouth, we're finally building a website.
Speaker 2:So really excited about that. Our shop. We finally like kind of thrown a name on it too. So our shop is going to be called Get Ups, for obvious reasons, and you know. So we'll have a website coming out here pretty soon, which is exciting for orders and stuff, and gosh. Yeah, I just feel like really lucky, not just to be in the position that I'm at, but to be surrounded by all the really cool people that I get to print for and the people that I get to hang out with in my shop.
Speaker 1:Can I just say that Not Cool is the coolest name.
Speaker 2:He is fantastic and, ironically, he is the coolest person I know. I'm not even kidding. He's like the definition of, definition of confidence. I mean, he'll just walk in here with like a full um, what do they call them? Like like a, what's it called when you wear like a full suit, it's like the piece of clothing is one. You just zip it up. You know a onesie, it's like a, it's like yeah, but it's like a um, like almost like an aviation suit, I don't know what they're.
Speaker 1:We call that a boiler suit or like a jumpsuit.
Speaker 2:It's like a jumpsuit. Yeah, that's what we yeah, we would say jumpsuit. He'll walk in with a bright pink jumpsuit, a purple like bucket hat and then long dangly rainbow earrings, and then he's got like a giant mustache and then he's like his nails are like fully decked out and then he's just like ready to print all day and get ink all over himself and like tell us all about the most random movie that just came out and you know, let's watch it while we work. He's a very cool guy and, yeah, I love, I love working with him Sounds like the best working environment ever.
Speaker 1:Until you have your website up, which I know will be coming soon, where can people find you to order and to have their own sticker orders placed?
Speaker 2:yeah, thank you for asking that, for right now, email is best. So, like, my email is literally rx skulls email at gmailcom because I'm a smart ass. So, uh, yeah, it's just rx skulls email at gmailcom. And then also people dm me through my instagram account all the time to get info on jobs. More than happy to talk with people through DM too. I try and do my best on keeping up with those.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I mean gosh, anybody, a lot of people, you know. Either they don't know that we print stickers for other people, or they're just like, oh, you're not going to want to print my stickers? Like, yeah, I do, Let me print your stickers.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I appreciate, appreciate the shout out. We'd love to do that absolutely, and once the website is up and ready, I'll be sure to update the description of this so that we have that in there. So anybody who's interested in getting your own stickers printed in the most fun workshop in the US by the sounds of things, I will link that so that people can go and find it themselves. Just before I ask about your socials, where people can go and find you on social media I have one question what would you like your legacy to be?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, that's a great question, because I mean street art. Yeah, street art is about, it is about legacy. I mean it's, it's, it's, it's what you're putting out there, and you know it is about legacy. I mean it's, it's, it's, it's what you're putting out there, and you know, what do I want to last? I mean, honestly, I just want my kind of my symbol to still be out there in some way or another.
Speaker 2:I mean, I just want it to be recognized. That's it. Like I know, like all of us street artists, there's ego in there. Of course you know what I mean. And a while we'll be putting our work all over the world, but I don't care that people know my name. I don't care really that people know anything about me. I don't care that my work make. I don't care if it makes money. I just want people to just be like oh, I've seen that before. That's really all I want and that would be amazing if that's what lived on after I'm long gone is if someone years from now says sees it and goes. I think I've seen that before. That would be enough for me for sure.
Speaker 2:I don't know whether I should say this right now. I'm going to go ahead and say it, though. I've always had this idea of when I it's getting really morbid for a second. When I die, I want to be cremated and I want my ashes to be put in ink and I want my loved ones or studio mates or whatever to literally print stickers with me and put them everywhere, so like there's legacy for you. It's just like I'm literally up and there I am and I just want you know to be running. I want to be riding, I want to be running in some way. It's pretty simple, but you know that's definitely enough for me. I just want you know to be running. I want to be riding, I want to be running in some way. It's pretty simple, but you know that's definitely enough for me. I just want my art still to be up and that's it.
Speaker 1:I don't think I could have predicted such a powerful answer, as I want to be the art. That's amazing. Well before I let you go, can you please tell us where we can find you on socials?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate all the questions because I feel like oftentimes they can be the same questions over and over, and I appreciate that those were really unique questions. So thank you. My main place that I post artwork is my Instagram account, which is RxGoals. That's pretty much it for now. I mean, I'm on threads with the same, I'm on Twitter with the same, but most active for sure on Instagram, and then we'll have our get ups website up relatively soon. That will be a great place to stay up with with work. I have my website, arcs goalscom, that I will be revamping soon as well, but but, yeah, if you want to see what's going on, what I'm up to, I'm very active in my Instagram stories and, yeah, I'd say that would be the place to find me thank you and I will just say that you do fantastic reels.
Speaker 1:So if somebody wants to go and check out your reels, you had one recently where you were showing your packing so everything you've just talked about all of your stickers and your installs. You did a packing process video. That was so good and I related hard. Another one that I loved was you did like a little bit of a sketch, which was like we're sticker people and you talk about all the different scenarios of we can't leave the house without stickers. That is unthinkable. So really comical reels as well. So not only will you see great art and get inspired, you'll get to see some comedy as well thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:That's it. Thank you so much for your time. I am so delighted to have spoken with you and to got some time with you, so thank you so much once again. It was a pleasure my pleasure, absolutely thank you.
Speaker 1:There you have it. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Episode of this Is Disruption. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to follow the podcast and never miss an episode. You can find us on all major podcast platforms Apple Podcasts, spotify, etc. Also on YouTube. Stay connected with us on social media. You can find the podcast at this Is Disruption pod on Instagram and TikTok and you will find updates and snippets of upcoming shows. Until next time, keep challenging the status quo, embracing your creative spirit and be brave. Go and create. Thank you and see you in the next episode.